The German revolution of 1918–1919, also known as the November Revolution (German: Novemberrevolution), brought down the German Empire at the end of World War I and set the stage for the establishment of the Weimar Republic. The revolution was sparked by the hardships suffered by the German people during the war, the economic and psychological impacts of the Empire's defeat, and the social tensions between the general populace and the aristocratic, military and bourgeois elite. It quickly and almost bloodlessly brought down the Empire by 9 November 1918, then in its second and more violent stage, the supporters of a parliamentary republic defeated those who wanted to create a soviet-style council republic.
The revolution began on 29 October 1918 when sailors at Kiel mutinied against orders to sail out against the British fleet. They established a revolutionary workers' and soldiers' council and in early November spread the revolt across Germany. Councils took power from the existing military, royal and civil authorities with little resistance or bloodshed. The revolution reached Berlin on 9 November, a republic was proclaimed, and Emperor Wilhelm II fled to Holland the next day.
On 10 November, the Council of the People's Deputies was formed as a provisional government by members of Germany's two main socialist parties. Under the leadership of Friedrich Ebert, it kept most of the imperial officer corps, administration and judiciary in place so that it could use their expertise to address the crises of the moment.
Those on the left wing of the revolution wanted to nationalise key industries, democratise the military and set up a council republic, but the moderates had control of most of the workers' and soldiers' councils and blocked any substantial movement towards their goals. The split between the moderate and radical socialists erupted into violence in the last days of 1918. The Spartacist uprising in January 1919 failed in its attempt to create a dictatorship of the proletariat and led to the murders of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht by members of the Freikorps. Into the spring, there were additional violently suppressed efforts to push the revolution further in the direction of a council republic, as well as short-lived local soviet republics, notably in Bavaria, Bremen and Würzburg.
The revolution's end date is generally given as 11 August 1919, the day the Weimar Constitution was adopted, but in many ways the revolution remained incomplete. It failed to resolve the fracture in the Left between moderate socialists and communists, while anti-democratic voices from the imperial government remained in positions of power. The Weimar Republic was from its birth under great pressure from both those on the Left and the Right who sought to undermine and replace it. In the end, the far Right was successful, and the Weimar Republic came to an end with the ascent of Hitler and the National Socialist Party.
The German revolution of 1918–1919, also known as the November Revolution (German: Novemberrevolution), brought down the German Empire at the end of World War I and set the stage for the establishment of the Weimar Republic. The revolution was sparked by the hardships suffered by the German people during the war, the economic and psychological impacts of the Empire's defeat, and the social tensions between the general populace and the aristocratic, military and bourgeois elite. It quickly and almost bloodlessly brought down the Empire by 9 November 1918, then in its second and more violent stage, the supporters of a parliamentary republic defeated those who wanted to create a soviet-style council republic.
The revolution began on 29 October 1918 when sailors at Kiel mutinied against orders to sail out against the British fleet. They established a revolutionary workers' and soldiers' council and in early November spread the revolt across Germany. Councils took power from the existing military, royal and civil authorities with little resistance or bloodshed. The revolution reached Berlin on 9 November, a republic was proclaimed, and Emperor Wilhelm II fled to Holland the next day.
On 10 November, the Council of the People's Deputies was formed as a provisional government by members of Germany's two main socialist parties. Under the leadership of Friedrich Ebert, it kept most of the imperial officer corps, administration and judiciary in place so that it could use their expertise to address the crises of the moment.
Those on the left wing of the revolution wanted to nationalise key industries, democratise the military and set up a council republic, but the moderates had control of most of the workers' and soldiers' councils and blocked any substantial movement towards their goals. The split between the moderate and radical socialists erupted into violence in the last days of 1918. The Spartacist uprising in January 1919 failed in its attempt to create a dictatorship of the proletariat and led to the murders of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht by members of the Freikorps. Into the spring, there were additional violently suppressed efforts to push the revolution further in the direction of a council republic, as well as short-lived local soviet republics, notably in Bavaria, Bremen and Würzburg.
The revolution's end date is generally given as 11 August 1919, the day the Weimar Constitution was adopted, but in many ways the revolution remained incomplete. It failed to resolve the fracture in the Left between moderate socialists and communists, while anti-democratic voices from the imperial government remained in positions of power. The Weimar Republic was from its birth under great pressure from both those on the Left and the Right who sought to undermine and replace it. In the end, the far Right was successful, and the Weimar Republic came to an end with the ascent of Hitler and the National Socialist Party.
Background events
World War I
World War I brought out serious weaknesses in the German Empire's social and political structures. When hostilities started in 1914, the German government portrayed the war as defensive, and all of Germany's political parties, including the left-wing Social Democratic Party (SPD), threw their support behind it with a pledge of intra-party peace (Burgfriedenspolitik). The "Spirit of 1914", the initial enthusiasm for the war that affected many but by no means all Germans, waned as the expected quick victory failed to materialize. The Allied blockade of Germany, which lasted from 1914 to 1919, cut off imported foodstuffs and led to widespread hunger as early as the Turnip Winter of 1916/17. Profiteering skyrocketed with the emergence of a large black market, inflation rose rapidly and class antagonisms increased. The growing discontent affected the bourgeoisie as well as workers, and the Pan-Germans and others on the Right began to blame Jews for the problems.
The Hindenburg Programme, an armaments and economic policy begun in late 1916 by the Supreme Army Command (OHL) in order to increase munitions output, was seen by the Left as worker exploitation despite some important concessions to them. Significant labour strikes, many centred in the armaments industry, took place beginning in 1916 and culminated in the huge January 1918 strike. Outwardly a demand for better food rations, it was also a mass worker protest against the war. In a sign of the growing social divide, the prominent Lutheran pastor Bruno Doehring anticipated the stab-in-the-back myth when he accused the January strikers of falling on the frontline soldiers from behind. The German Fatherland Party, a populist pro-victory movement founded in September 1917, claimed a membership of over one million by July 1918. After Russia pulled out of the war, the Fatherland Party fed an "annexationist fever" for lands in the east among the conservative elite.
Political weaknesses in the German Empire emerged along with the war's social divisions. Under the Burgfriede, theReichstag met only irregularly and then usually to do little more than approve additional war funding. Emperor Wilhelm II had not played a major role in German politics since the Daily Telegraph Affair in 1908, yet he remained technically the supreme commander of the military. It was able to step in to fill political voids because the imperial constitution did not define or put limits on its power. In 1916 generals Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff used their positions in the OHL to become in effect an ersatz monarchy. In July 1917 they were able to force out long-time Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, who saw the necessity for political reforms in light of the changed domestic situation, and replace him with a conservative of their own choice, Georg Michaelis. Less than a week later, the Reichstag passed a resolution calling for a negotiated peace without annexations, but it was rejected by the military and the conservative parties and ignored by the Allies.
The war also led to a split in the SPD, the largest political party in Germany, which had taken 35% of the national vote and 110 seats in the last imperial Reichstag elected in 1912. Because of increasing intra-party conflicts centering around the members who opposed the war, party leadership under Friedrich Ebert expelled them from the party in January 1917. The Spartacists were among the expellees who founded the anti-war Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) under the leadership of Hugo Haase on 6 April 1917. After that point, the SPD was officially renamed the Majority Social Democratic Party of Germany (MSPD), although it was still generally referred to as the SPD. The USPD called for an immediate end to the war and a further democratisation of Germany.
End of the war
Impact of the Russian Revolution
In April 1917, the German government facilitated Vladimir Lenin's return to Russia from his exile in Switzerland in the hope that he would weaken the tsarist regime and its conduct of the war. After the 1917 October Revolution that put Lenin and the Bolsheviks in power, many in both Russia and Germany expected that Soviet Russia would attempt to foment a communist revolution in Germany. For Germany's far left, it provided hope for its own success, but for the moderate socialists and the middle and upper classes, it was a source of fear that the kind of bloody civil war that was occurring in Russia could also break out in Germany.
The moderate SPD leadership consequently shifted away from the party's official stance as revolutionary socialists. Otto Braun clarified the SPD's position in an article titled "The Bolsheviks and Us" (Die Bolschewiki und Wir) in the party newspaper Vorwärts of 15 February 1918: "Socialism cannot be erected on bayonets and machine guns. If it is to last, it must be realised with democratic means. ... Therefore we must draw a thick, visible dividing line between ourselves and the Bolsheviks."
On 3 March 1918, the newly established Soviet government signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany to end Russia's involvement in the war. The terms of the treaty, under which Russia lost 34% of its population, 54% of its industrial land, 89% of its coalfields and 26% of its railways, were arguably harsher for the Russians than the later Treaty of Versailles would be for the Germans. Brest-Litovsk revived the German people's hopes for a final victory in the West, but social tensions increased when the foodstuffs expected from the eastern regions did not arrive, and the shock of the final defeat that came six months later was that much worse because of the raised expectations.
Military collapse
Following the Allied breakthrough at the Battle of Amiens on 8 August 1918 – Ludendorff's "black day of the German Army" – military morale began to deteriorate rapidly. Troops increasingly refused to obey orders, deserted and voluntarily surrendered to the enemy. Ludendorff later wrote in his war memoirs: "Retreating troops, passing by a fresh division that was fighting bravely, called out: 'Strike breakers!' and 'You're dragging out the war!'" The collapse of military morale was echoed in the civilian population. A Reichstag representative from Baden reported in late September that many southern Germans felt "enormous bitterness against Prussia; not against the Prussian people but against the Junkers and the military caste. The dominant feeling among us is that Prussia must fail, and if Prussia does not fail, Germany will fail because of Prussia."
On 29 September 1918, the Supreme Army Command informed Emperor Wilhelm II and Chancellor Georg von Hertling that the military situation was hopeless in the face of the enemy's overwhelming advantage in manpower and equipment. General Ludendorff said that a request for an immediate ceasefire should be sent to the Entente powers. In hopes of more favourable peace terms, he also recommended accepting American president Woodrow Wilson's demand that the imperial government be democratised. His aim was to protect the reputation of the Imperial Army by placing the responsibility for the capitulation and its consequences at the feet of the democratic parties and the Reichstag. In a veiled reference to the workers who had struck the armaments plants, the Social Democrats who had helped pass the Reichstag Peace Resolution and the radical Spartacists who wanted a dictatorship of the proletariat, he said to his staff officers on 1 October:
I have asked His Majesty to bring into the government those circles to whom we mainly owe it that we have come this far. ... Let them now make the peace that must be made. They should eat the soup they have served up to us!
His statement marked the birth of the "stab-in-the-back myth", according to which revolutionary socialists and republican politicians had betrayed the undefeated army and turned an almost certain victory into a defeat.
Political response
Although shocked by Ludendorff's report and the news of the certain defeat, the majority parties in the Reichstag, most notably the SPD, were willing to take on the responsibility of government. Chancellor Hertling objected to introducing a parliamentary system and resigned. Emperor Wilhelm II then appointed Prince Max of Baden as the new imperial chancellor on 3 October. The Prince was considered a liberal and at the same time was a representative of the royal family. Most of the men in his cabinet were independents, but there were also two members of the SPD. The following day, the new government offered the Allies the truce that Ludendorff had insisted on, and on the 5th the German public was informed of the dismal situation that it faced. Even up to that late point, government propaganda and the press had led the people to believe that the war would still be won. The shock of the impending defeat caused a "paralytic bitterness and deep resignation" which eased the way for those who wanted an immediate ceasefire.
During October, President Wilson responded to the request for a truce with three diplomatic notes. As a precondition for negotiations, he demanded the retreat of Germany from all occupied territories, the cessation of submarine activities and (implicitly) the Emperor's abdication. Following the third note of 24 October, which emphasised the danger to international peace inherent in the power of the "King of Prussia" (Wilhelm II) and the "military authorities of the Empire", General Ludendorff resigned and was replaced as First General Quartermaster by General Wilhelm Groener.
On 28 October, the Reichstag passed constitutional reforms that changed Germany into a parliamentary monarchy. The chancellor and his ministers were made dependent on the confidence of the parliamentary majority rather than the emperor, and peace treaties and declarations of war required the Reichstag's approval. Because the chancellor was also responsible for the emperor's acts under the constitution, the emperor's military right of command (Kommandogewalt) became the chancellor's responsibility and thus subject to parliamentary control. As far as the Social Democrats were concerned, the October Constitution met all the party's important constitutional objectives. Ebert regarded the formation of the Baden government as the birthday of German democracy. Since the Emperor had voluntarily ceded power, he considered a revolution unnecessary.
The October constitutional reform was not a thorough break with the existing state and its legal order. It had been conceived of as a "revolution from above" that was the only means of preventing a "revolution from below". The reforms on paper did not convince angry and exhausted workers and soldiers. The population as a whole saw the Emperor as responsible for the suffering and outcome of the war, and calls for his abdication grew.